A Scientist of International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) said that disentangling of the Sorghum genome will strengthen the institute's research for improvement of sorghum, one of the mandate crops of ICRISAT.
General Willam Dar, ICRISAT Director, said in a release that this is the first such breakthrough for a dryland agricultural crop that is adapted to drought.
The sequencing of the sorghum genome was announced in a scientific article published on January 29, 2009, in the journal Nature.
"The sequence of sorghum genome will provide us a better understanding on genes that make sorghum, as compared to other cereals, more drought tolerant," he said.
The Genome sequencing reported by the global team of scientists was led by Prof Andrew Paterson of the University of Georgia, US and included ICRISAT's Cereal Breeder C Tom Hash.
Sorghum is the second food crop from the grass family to have its genome fully sequenced, rice being the first one.
Dar said that it is the first crop to be sequenced that has a more efficient C4 photosynthesis system. There are other grasses with the C4 photosynthesis system like Sugarcane, maize and pearl millet that should benefit from this. He also added that the different cereals such as rice, wheat, barley, maize, sorghum and pearl millet show similarities in gene number and gene order, since they are derived from a common ancestor, which allows the use of genomic resources from one cereal species to improve another.
Molecular markers, for instance, based on the sequence data of sorghum and rice have been developed and are being used in pearl millet, another mandate drop of ICRISAT, he said.
He added that Sorghum is the fifth most important and relatively drought tolerant cereal crop that is the staple diet of more than 500 million people in over 30 countries of semi-arid tropics and grown in 98 countries of Africa, Asia, Oceania and the Americas.
Dar said that ICRISAT has been engaged in research to improve sorghum for food and feed proposes for more than three decades.
Furthermore, he claimed that ICRISAT has pioneered the ethanol production technology and its commercialization, with sweet sorghum being the feedstock for ethanol production.
ICRISAT release added that genome sequence of sorghum has laid a significant
landmark in genomics research for the sorghum community in particular and
biofuel community in general.
